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My Gaia Wind turbine project

well this is a thread on my Gaia wind turbines. They finally got commissioned on Friday and are now up and running and doing ok so far.
During the time I was looking at putting some up I was on the look out for some data on real turbines up and running but couldn't find anything, to that aim I will put up every month how they are performing, warts and all so anyone thinking of going down the turbine route can see.

I would request that it doesnt get hijacked by the usual political debate, pro/anti and I wont respond to any of the usual comment that appears and hope that nobody else does either. This is a specific machine that sits in the small/medium market and can hopefully help out people who are interested. The wider debate is for elsewhere. I am putting it here as most renewable threads appear here and there is nowhere specific for it.

Now to find how to put up those pictures :-

Well that looks ok so far, need a picture of the 2 up now will come back to it when have photo.

Project cost around £110,000 including turbines, install, planning, cost of borrowing money and solicitors and alterations to some electricity connections. The postcode at farmhouse survey windspeed is 4.8m/s but I think its rubbish as all surround grid points are way higher, will put them up when get chance but I think more like 5.5m/s plus. Here are the figures and I think the location is not the yellow but the squares to the bottom right.

The finance was through the bank and was lent on existing assets rather than the turbines or income from them. I could have done a deal lodged against the FIT with a machinery finance company (peregrine in my case), however the better deal was the bank and also Segen had just changed names to Myriad which caused lots of issues.

The project didnt go as smoothly as I would have wished with several hold ups, surprisingly enough the planning was the least of them. The Segen name change caused issues as did their delay in applying for DNO approval. We had to install a G59 relay as having 2 we didnt come under the degregation for G83 for our connection to the grid and I had issues with the cost of this compared to info I was told at the time of the quote.

However we got there in the end and the guys who put them up were really good and the install went surprisingly smoothly, the good weather helped as I was having nightmares regarding getting a 30 ton crane on site if the weather had turned. From being in pieces on the ground to up was 3 days, though we wernt running at this point.

As for output, we have budgeted on 60000 KW a year which is 165ish a day, this should produce a payback between best case 5.5 years and 6.8ish years worst case, excluding brakedowns and maintenance and interest rate hikes, however not including FIT increases and cost of power increases. The idea is we use the majority of the power ourselves as our usage is around low 90's and selling to the grid at 4p isn't that attractive.

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Blimey phil that was quick, you responded before I had finished photo's:lolk:
Yes have 2 and dont know as they are in silage fields at moment so wont know until June but if you mean noise then they wont bother, had horses go past 30m away and never bothered, sounds like a plane overhead or bike going down road, cant hear them more than 40m away.

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

where abouts are you at? michelle robertson sell them to you? michelle did an online survey for 2 turbines for me but came back with a 3 m/s wind speed so ive just bought a power predictor so i can see the real wind speed!

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Sounds like a great thread have been looking for something like this for a while but maybe to late Have just erected 3 Proven 35-2s but they are not yet commissioned yet and was going to do something similar and would be happy to do the very same regarding performance and faults

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Originally Posted by lanark lad

Sounds like a great thread have been looking for something like this for a while but maybe to late Have just erected 3 Proven 35-2s but they are not yet commissioned yet and was going to do something similar and would be happy to do the very same regarding performance and faults

Well there you go then, we can compare and contrast when you get up and running. As I said I was looking for something real to help me decide when I needed info so hopefully it will help others, no axe to grind I made my choice and I am stuck with it for better or worse just like the wife:lolk:

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Talked recently to a farmer who owns some in mid Wales. Says they are visible from the infamous 470. They are Siemens. He's just bought the adjacent farm and is intending to add to his stock so he must be pleased with how they are going.

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Very good BigAndy
Where they from Segen power ltd
We've got the cage tower
Put ours up with a truck hiab crane
Lanark-Lad get those pictures up certainly good view from up there:lolk:
Beeker-24.5m from ground to tip
18m from ground to hub

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

nice project andy, hope it works out for you. our gaia will have been in a year by the end of next week and is currently sitting around 26500. We had hoped for over 30mw, however given the severe winter we are relatively pleased. we had a really cold snap of around 6 weeks where the turbine did barely anything. next winter could be wet and windy, who knows, but i would be quietly confident that the average production will get up to that 30mw target in the years to come. reliabililty so far cannot be questioned.

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Gaia here went up end of july 2010, currently just over 23,000kw. Had a problem with a faulty anemometer which meant it spent quite a while braked when it shouldnt, but all sorted now. Were in a relatively low average wind speed area, estimated 5.5 / 6 ms.

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Well been running for 1 whole week and I think we have had a decent one, so far generated 1251 KWhrs so ahead of schedule, bet it doesnt last lol.

yesterday turbine 2 had some problems, it kept stopping then starting, did it at least 5 times and was offline for a few hours, not quite got to the bottom of it but think it might be a grid voltage problem from the error message. Had to turn off and let it reboot- does that sound familiar?:lolk:
Anyway it has been ok since but this may well come back, teething troubles so did expect some.

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Like everybody and their dog up here(N E Scotland),we have 2 C & F 20kw in planning at the moment so are sitting with fingers crossed.

Our sites (2 farms) come out on the Decc website as 7.6m/s, we are well up at 700ft on a hill too so should be windy enough.

Every company I've had/spoke to are promising the world, so it will be interesting to see how far off their predicitions/forecasts are.

On our sites, 4 companies selling 3 different turbines all say that the capital invested will be produced in 3.4yrs, add in interest/insurance and maintenance and we will be mega rich by the 5th year!!!!!

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Met with the C&F saleman the other day from down here as a friend of mine is interested. Got to say their figures do look impressive on paper, if that translates into actual then they will be good. If they had MCS approval and a proven track record I may have tried to change planning but thay havn't and wont until around september. If all goes well I certainly wont be ruling them out if I want to add to my turbines.

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Originally Posted by BigAndy

Met with the C&F saleman the other day from down here as a friend of mine is interested. Got to say their figures do look impressive on paper, if that translates into actual then they will be good. If they had MCS approval and a proven track record I may have tried to change planning but thay havn't and wont until around september. If all goes well I certainly wont be ruling them out if I want to add to my turbines.

Are you able to add once you have signed into the FIT? I thought there may me some restriction on doing that.

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Can anyone think of any ideas for a mast so i can stick my power predictor wind turbine 15 meters in the air? Miriad came back with a wind speed of 3.4m/s and i think its alot windier on this specific hill so id like to monitor it for a while.

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Originally Posted by chippy

Can anyone think of any ideas for a mast so i can stick my power predictor wind turbine 15 meters in the air? Miriad came back with a wind speed of 3.4m/s and i think its alot windier on this specific hill so id like to monitor it for a while.

Power predictor (I assume you are referring to the anemometers, they don't sell a wind turbine) themselves sell masts.

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Originally Posted by BOB1

Are you able to add once you have signed into the FIT? I thought there may me some restriction on doing that.

yep you are able to add but your FIT may change. We are on the 2nd band FIT as we have 2 and so are over the 15kw banding, this was unfortunately news to me a few weeks back as I had been sold turbines on top banding FIT and they "forgot to mention" having 2 would put us down a band.

However the rules are that if you erect another you get origonal rate on first FIT and whatever rate applies on 2nd FIT. So if you get 2 gaia's for instance you claim top rate on first then as long as 2nd is done 12 months after you would get top rate still on first and 2nd band only on the 2nd installation. If you go for a different technology eg solar you can claim top on both. Because we put 2 up together we can only get 2nd band as it goes down as 1 installation.

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Originally Posted by chippy

Can anyone think of any ideas for a mast so i can stick my power predictor wind turbine 15 meters in the air? Miriad came back with a wind speed of 3.4m/s and i think its alot windier on this specific hill so id like to monitor it for a while.

If I were you i would do the scaffold pole option. start with a 3-4 inch 6 meter pole and work down. Either weld a plate on end and bolt together or wels tubes on so they slot into each other. With a decent plate on top to carry annometer and tie wires (3 or 4) to some pre pored concrete in holes a suitable distance away you should be able to put up something fairly cheaply I would have thought. As long as not near any footpaths and you stick a fence round to keep stock away it would do job for 12 months data.

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Oh forgot to mention earlier, that problem with turbine 2 returned and we lost 24hrs production. I went away for the night and just after I left it stopped, got it going again today on my return but have lost production. Error message was "Repeated grid error phase drop" cant quite figure it as it was only the 2nd turbine but they are supposed to be coming this week to finish off so hopefully get to the bottom of it.

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

Originally Posted by BigAndy

Oh forgot to mention earlier, that problem with turbine 2 returned and we lost 24hrs production. I went away for the night and just after I left it stopped, got it going again today on my return but have lost production. Error message was "Repeated grid error phase drop" cant quite figure it as it was only the 2nd turbine but they are supposed to be coming this week to finish off so hopefully get to the bottom of it.

We had sort of the same problem at the start
The voltage on the grid was too high or something
We changed the voltage parameters on the turbine computer and was fixed
Who's doing it for you is it the gaia team

Re: My Gaia Wind turbine project

scaffolding pole it is then! My plan is also to get planning for 2 turbines and put 1 up this year and the other next year so that they will both be in top band

A question for the guys that have gaias already...... Is it worth paying the gaia team to do all the planning etc for me or should i do it myself?

If you put up 2 you wont get top band on both, only on first as soon as you put up the 2nd you will only get 2nd band on that one, as you cross the 15kw threshold. Who you going to get them through? How difficult you think your area is?